


Haze

by charlottesometimes



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Angst, But you've got no idea HOW we go from one to the other, Caretaking fantasy, Drug Addiction, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Will Graham has a nice day, Eventual Will Graham/Alana Bloom, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Poor Will, So much angst, Someone Helps Will Graham, Those tags give everything away, it's not at all certain i'll get to the nice stuff without accidentally killing everyone, post-savoureux speculative type of deal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 11:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1004913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charlottesometimes/pseuds/charlottesometimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Clarice Starling’s line in Silence of the Lambs, Will Graham is "a drunk in Florida now with a face that’s hard to look at." So we know Will’s got an addictive personality. What if something happened that triggered that sooner? </p><p>Will was in the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane for a year before he was released and Hannibal Lecter taken into custody thanks to new evidence. When Alana picks him up, she expects a happy reunion. Instead, the man she hasn’t seen in a year is sick and even more broken than the man who went into Baltimore. Can she help Will Graham? First, he has to be willing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted many fics in my life (this would be my second), so any constructive criticism would be accepted with love. I don't own the characters here and it's all for fun. It's not beta'd. 
> 
> In this first chapter, I mostly just set some things up. I don't do anything horrible to Will Graham just yet. But I will. Oh. I will. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Baltimore, Maryland; just before Will’s incarceration—

Alana immediately let Jack know she was leaving for the rest of the day when Dr. Pentacost, Will’s doctor, called to let the Bureau know that Will was, if nothing else, acting differently.

 “How is that?” Jack had asked.

“He woke up screaming and vomiting today,” the doctor said wryly on Jack’s speakerphone. “I’m not sure what it means yet. He had to be sedated. And his recovery from the encephalitis had been going so well. The hallucinations were abating.”

Alana, for her part, wasn’t going to just assume that Will was deteriorating further, and in some new, unexpected way, when she could go and talk to him when he woke up.

He was still asleep when she arrived in his room, brown pea coat dusted with melting snow flakes. It was dark outside and in the room, though it was just after 5 p.m. The sky was grey with an impending late season snow storm. She thought again of the clocks Will had drawn, and of the unlikelihood of his sudden descent—but no. She didn’t think about that.

She sat down in the hard blue chair beside Will’s bed. He smelled of old sweat and salty cafeteria food. She longed to take him away from here, to make him better someplace else, some place safer and healthier, with a proper shower and a vegetable garden. She had to admit she was picturing her own home in this fantasy. She wanted to take Will home, to her home where his dogs were staying, and make sure he got well.

But he was a prisoner of the state under suspicion for a series of an array of murders, and his bond had been denied for risk of flight. So. That wasn’t going to happen. The best she could do was sit inside his hospital room while the local police grunts stood outside to keep Will in.

So far, during Will’s recovery, Alana’s contact with him had been minimal. The first time she’d seen him after the diagnosis, he had wanted to tell her something important. And she had stopped him. He didn’t need to be theorizing right now, didn’t need to be working. If you still want to talk about it when you’re head is clearer, she’d said, we will.

Now she wondered if his head would ever be clearer. Maybe he’d been broken by the disease, his mind warped irreparably.

So she sat in his hospital room as he slept with the unnatural peace of the drugged—lay unconscious is closer to the truth than slept—and she waited for him to wake up.

After an hour she got a magazine from the waiting room. After two, she actually opened it. After three, she started to read a few of the words on the page before her.

It was then that Will chose to wake up, and he was sitting up with a hand in his hair when she looked up from an article about Chinese imports.

She stood up immediately and impulsively, her hand going out to caress his shoulder. This had become a habit of hers, touching him in ways that were far too tender for him to be comfortable with them. And yet he didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to need it, even if he didn’t always want it. So she kept doing it.

“Will,” she said. “Will, are you alright?”

For a moment, Will Graham’s eyes were veiled by confusion as they had been so many times in the last few months, and Alana was afraid. He was still sick, maybe sicker, maybe sick for good. No Will would ever smile happily on his porch as she approached at dusk. No Will would ever come over to her house to see how well taken care of the dogs had been, greet them tenderly, and then stay for a glass of wine, stay for dinner, stay safe with her all night.

No Will would ever look her soberly in the eye and say he hadn’t done the things he’d been accused of doing.

But the confusion just flashed, and was gone. He shook himself visibly in a show of self possession, and his eyes focused with clarity on her face.

Alana involuntarily gave a small smile, stopped herself, and then couldn’t help it: A full smile broke across her face.

He was looking her in the eye already, almost on accident.

Then he looked away, but awkwardly. Not crazily. Not in paranoia, or with manic fevered purpose.

“Alana,” he asked. “I’m sorry. I was … I was asleep.” He put a hand on his forehead. Alana could tell it wasn’t slick. Will was pale and thinner than he’d been three months before, and there were bags beneath his eyes. But the wildness was gone from those eyes, and his mannerisms were suddenly familiar again.

“I know,” she said, laughing. “I was hoping you would wake up before it got so late I had to ditch ya.”

Will tried for a smile to match her own. At first he failed. But then he caught her eye again, and a small smile touched his eyes.

“It’s nice to see you,” he said.

“It’s nice to see you, too.”

“What, uh,” he gestured around the room, looking for words—an old habit of Will’s, the old Will’s. “What brings ya here?”

Alana felt her smile slip. “Just checking on you,” she said. Then she remembered she’d resolved to stop handling Will so delicately. Then she remembered she had new reason to handle him as delicately as ever.

But Will was on to her, one way or another. “Come on Alana,” he said. “You’d have acted differently from the moment I woke up if you were just here to check on me. You might be one of the worst liars I know. It’s refreshing, but it does mean you can’t protect me all the time.”

“Do you want to be protected?”

“By you? Sure.”

Alana opened her mouth, but found that there were no words immediately forthcoming.

Will suddenly smiled, genuinely and broadly, his eyes brushing hers with real contact. She nearly flushed in embarrassed and unexplainable pleasure.

“That’s sweet, Will,” she managed lamely after a moment of stunned smiling.

“Yeah,” he said, still smiling but no longer looking her in the eye. He tried to again, but failed. “So what’s really up?” he asked finally.

A strange connection established, Alana felt comfortable enough to say: “The doctor said you were getting worse.” She paused, considering. “More or less. He said you woke up screaming and vomiting this morning.”

Will nodded grimly. “I did,” he said. “But it was a …” he sighed. “A rational vomiting and screaming.” His face bore no signs of humor. This was usually how Will joked: With the cover of not joking. Perhaps it made it easier for him to admit to himself he was engaging in a social behavior if he felt like he was doing it only for his own benefit. Alana often suspected things like that of Will; she did believe he wanted human relationships and human contact, but feared them. She could not accept that he did not want them.

Alana was used to his joke delivery, though, and found that she let off a sardonic little laugh. “Of course it was,” she said, nodding.

The left corner of Will’s grimly set mouth quirked up, then settled back down. “I just woke up and … it was like the … everything … that happened in the last three months happened to me all at once, right here, in the hospital bed.”

“A hallucination?” Alana asked, concerned again.

“No, no, not a hallucination,” Will answered. “The memories just all came up and … clamored to be seen, to be processed, all at once. Because I hadn’t been processing them, while I was sick. My brain hadn’t … felt the need.”

“So when your mind was doing better, it reacted more normally to all those memories, and the effect was …”

“A rational vomiting and screaming,” Will finished. “Or at least a sympathetic one.”

“I get it, I think,” Alana said. She had to admit she was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But right now, he was more lucid and himself than he’d been in months, and he was receiving proper medical care. It was believable. More or less. “So how are you, now?”

Will was staring hard at his hands on his lap. “Despairing,” he said.

Alana could not reply for a moment. That was more open than Will usually was. “Well,” she said finally. “Despair is often sane.”

“There is that,” Will replied.

“About the … charges?”

Will nodded.

“Will …” Alana trailed off, hoping he would look at her. When he didn’t, she reached out with one manicured finger and tilted his face up to hers. “Will.” Her voice was hushed. She glanced at the hospital room door. It was shut, the guards outside talking to one another quietly. “Did you kill those people? Is that one of the memories that clamored to be processed? Please tell me the truth. I think it will be easier for me to take, hearing it from you now, than hearing it in a court room, via a chain of irrefutable evidence.” 

A muscle in Will’s jaw jumped as he jerked his head away. “No,” he said emphatically. “No.” It was a desperate plea the second time. “The evidence doesn’t say I did. And I don’t think I did. But, like I said, the evidence agrees. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to answer that question at all. I know how … crazy I’ve been. Trust me, I know. But the evidence doesn’t add up to it being me. The fact of the matter is, the evidence points to someone framing me.” He looked up at Alana, his eyes resting on her forehead in a reasonable facsimile of eye contact.

“That’s what you said, before,” Alana answered. “We all thought it was a paranoid delusion—“

“It wasn’t a paranoid delusion,” Will said. “Even at my worst—well, not at my worst, but almost at my worst—I could generally tell what was real and what wasn’t after the fact. Half the time I even knew when I was hallucinating.”

“Will, it’s not going to fly to suggest you were the world’s sanest crazy person.”

“That’s why I’m saying: The evidence doesn’t point to me,” he said. “And anyone who looked at the evidence, the real evidence, with a cool eye—a cool eye on every person involved—every person—would see what I see: That it can’t have been me. And that the list of suspects is short.”

“Who’s on the list, Will?”

“Jack. You.” He licked his lips. “Katz. The other members of the CSI team Jack put together for our cases. And … Hannibal. Everyone who knew the details of the cases where the copycat got involved.”

“How does that rule you out, Will?”

Will paused, looking down at his fingers again. “I just mean, I wasn’t losing it when two of the copycat murders took place. So I didn’t do it in a black out, and I didn’t do it in a paranoid delusion. Whether you want to think I did it sane and while I was in control is your choice.”

“I don’t think you did,” Alana said.

“And I don’t think you did,” Will said sharply, looking up at her. “So. At least we can agree on the pool of candidates.”

“Will …” Alana swallowed hard. “Do you have any more … specific suspicions?”

The clock. Alana pressed the memory down.

Will’s face was still. He said Alana was the bad liar, but she had learned Will’s tell. And that was it: Stillness.

“No,” he said.

Alana nodded. She had no idea how to feel—let alone think—about this situation. She needed time to think, time alone. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll—“

And she would have had to find a way to duck out of the conversation, if her phone hadn’t tittered to let her know Jack Crawford had just sent her a text message.

“We’ve got a case,” it said. “Need you here now.”


	2. Release (I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alana gets Will home after he is released from prison. It's not as peaceful as that sounds.

Baltimore County, Maryland. Thirteen months later—

It was the fifth time Alana had been in this particular broad, dim hallway of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. The first three times had been to interview Dr. Abel Gideon. 

The fourth had been eleven months and nearly two weeks ago, when she had been allowed her one and only face-to-face visit with Will Graham during his thirteen-month tenure there. 

Yet the hallway was familiar, since it was not significantly different from other modern prison hallways, with a roof so high the florescent light got lost before it reached the floor, leaving dark corners. It had a dank, claustrophobic feeling despite its space, and the scuffed floor radiated damp. Walking through it now, flanked by burly orderlies, its menacing impact was not lessened in the slightest by the fact that, this time, she was here not to visit Will Graham nor to leave him there, but to retrieve him. 

She and Beverly Katz had spent the months after Will’s entrance into the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane going over the evidence against Will, poking holes in it. The case, really, did not hold up to scrutiny; it was the lack of a suitable alternative suspect that drove Jack and others to believe Will was guilty. Alana had considered what Will had said, about how he was framed. But there was no evidence of that, either. There was just no good, solid picture emerging from the evidence at all, nothing that a jury would agree with—other than the story of Will’s guilt, which was compelling even if it wasn’t supported by the evidence.

And then an intrepid and interested news-junky of a bank employee had found cached ATM security footage from the night Will Graham was supposed to have killed Abigail Hobbes. He had sent it to Freddie Lounds; Freddie Lounds had posted it, of course, but then she’d done a good thing. She’d told him to send it to the FBI. 

It showed Will, obviously disoriented but not raving, trying to take money from the ATM. In the video, it’s clear that the confused Will puts no card into the machine, or there would have been a record and the incident would have come to light earlier. The machine was in another town than Abigail’s cabin, an hour’s drive. The time stamp, exactly at the only time Will could have killed Abigail based upon how long he was in Minnesota and when she was last seen, effectively gave him an alibi for the murder for which there was the most evidence against Will. 

In response, Freddie Lounds had challenged the nation to scan its video footage for evidence that could re-implicate Will Graham. A lot of people, at that point, hated him. That set off a flood. Security guards and employees with too much time on their hands complied and, sometimes against company policies, scanned footage from the times when Will Graham—or whoever committed the murders of which he was accused—would have been around. 

And instead two different videos of Hannibal Lecter being near the scenes of the crimes surfaced, the better-quality one showing him waltzing to and from Dr. Sutcliff’s office. In both videos, he towed a fine leather attaché case. Both the people who had found those videos told Freddie Lounds they had been looking for images of either Will Graham or Hannibal Lecter, since Lounds had reported Will’s accusations about Hannibal after interviewing a hospital orderly who overheard him speaking to Jack. There was a contingent of people who believed Will’s story. Some were racists, but others were just well-meaning, bored people who liked underdogs. 

The FBI—Beverly Katz—subpoenaed the businesses for the footage, and got a search warrant for Hannibal Lecter’s house. The attaché case was discovered—it was a very, very nice attaché case; one could understand why elegant Hannibal kept it, even after what he had used it for—and searched for trace evidence. Inside was a trace amount of blood. The blood belonged to Elise Nichols, Cassie Boyle, and Dr. Sutcliff. 

Hannibal had been in jail without bond for three months. 

That morning, the paperwork had gone through, and the charges against Will had been officially dropped. Because he had no next of kin, Alana had been allowed to pick him up and, as Chilton put it, take him “into her personal care, because he is still a very mentally ill man.” She assumed that was Chilton’s way of trying to make up to her the fact that he had kept Will from her for the last two years “for her protection.” Chilton would want as many friends as he could now, in order to get himself the new prize: Hannibal. 

Alana was a mixture of fear and excitement as the orderlies—one of whom had handcuffs hanging from his belt, unexplainably—led her to stand beside the three security guards who clustered around the open metal door to Will’s cell. Excitement was winning, but barely. 

The fear came from uncertainty at how Will would be. She had not seen him up close since that one visit eleven months earlier. 

She and the orderlies stopped in front of the three security guards, and all five men looked at her expectantly. So she stepped into the cell. 

Will sat on the edge of his cot, hospital blanket folded neatly beside him. A garbage bag, presumably full of what belongings he’d had while in Baltimore, sat before him. He was gazing at the bag, or at the floor, elbows on knees and fingers steepled. 

Will looked awful. He’d lost a dangerous amount of weight. His skin was grey, with ashey bags beneath both eyes. He was clean shaven, but three razor knicks indicated whoever had done the shaving hadn’t been gentle. He wore the clothes he’d been admitted in, a plaid button down and khaki pants, but they hung from him. His steepled fingers, she realized, were trembling. 

Worse than all that, though, was his expression. Blank. Absent. Gone. Lips slightly parted, eyes hooded, facial muscles slack. She’d seen Will wear many terrifying and heartbreaking expressions—inhuman anger as he slipped into the mind of a killer; oceans-deep uncertainty as he contemplated his own relationships with other human beings; wounded betrayal, when he talked about Hannibal Lecter. But she had never seen him blank. He was always filled up with something, filled to the brim, overflowing even. And now he was dry. 

Alana shook herself. This might be a trick of conscience. She felt like Will’s stay here in what amounted to a maximum security prison was her own fault, and so she was projecting her guilt onto Will’s experience, imagining that it was worse than it probably was. He was just tired, she decided. That’s why he was blank. Tired, and still processing his release. Such a whip-crack change of pace, from inmate facing the electric chair to free man, would leave anyone unsure what to feel, and what expression to wear. 

Alana felt her hand go out toward her old friend. 

“Will?”

The thin man looked up. She could see then, in the light, that there were new creases on his forehead, around his mouth. None near his eyes, no smile lines. The pallor she had thought was grey had a greenish tinge to it. And he was sweating slightly in the cool environment, a few tracks of sweat visible on his forehead. 

“Hello Alana,” he said. His voice held no tone. He stood up gingerly, as if the motion pained him, though his expression registered nothing. 

Alana realized her smile had faltered and pasted it on again. “Hi Will,” she said. “Are you ready to go?” 

Will nodded. “That’s what it’s time for,” he said. He picked up the black garbage bag, again moving gingerly. 

“Can I get that for you, Will?” Alana asked. “You look like something’s wrong with your back.” 

He shook his head. “I’m alright,” he said tonelessly. 

Alana smiled more widely, forcing it. “Ok,” she said. She realized that this encounter was not going as she’d secretly hoped it would. It was not a tearful, glad reunion. But she also realized that something—she had no idea what, yet—was very wrong with Will. She had to get him home, and find out what it was. 

And then, she had to kill Dr. Chilton. 

They made their way through the hallway again, and down a smaller corridor Alana had not seen before. Inmates in shackles accompanied by guards shuffled by them. A patient’s hallway. 

None of the patients Alana saw looked at all well in the institutional light. 

She was grateful when they passed through a double plastic door and into a room with a large metal booth to one side, the man sitting behind it tapping a sheaf of paper into orderliness. He handed it to Will. 

“It’s all ready for you,” the man said professionally. He looked at Alana, who he had helped with the outtake paperwork a few minutes before. “Good luck.” 

He pressed a button. A mid-toned sound like a short, muted fire-alarm emanated from beneath his booth. From the corner of her eye Alana noticed a red light above the room’s exit door change to green. 

“Go on,” said one of the guards. 

No ceremony. Just, here’s your clearly sick friend, have a nice life. They went through the door and into the sunlight. 

Immediately, Will stepped forward, no longer following Alana, moving just a few paces ahead before stopping again. He seemed to be staring into the middle distance for a moment as Alana watched him. His posture told no tails at first; it wasn’t relaxed, but it wasn’t tense. 

Then all at once, his back curled, his shoulders seized up, and his arms stiffened. 

Alana took a step toward him. “Will,” she said, trying to get a look at his face. “Will.” She touched the side of his head to turn his face toward her. But he didn’t budge. 

It was then that she realized he was beginning to rock back and forth, almost to vibrate, and that he was breathing in tiny shallow gasps. His left leg began to tap up and down, jangling to an irregular beat, slow for a moment and then urgent, slower and then more urgent again. 

He was having, Alana was almost entirely sure, a panic attack. The medical file Chilton had passed on to her that morning, as she was to be Will’s new psychiatrist, had not mentioned panic attacks. Alana glanced back at the metal door, but it was shut tight, and there was no handle on the outside.

She turned back to her friend. “Will,” she said quietly but firmly. “Are you having a panic attack?” 

Will’s head, which was already vibrating, seemed to move more broadly in a nod. 

“Do you want to go back into Baltimore?” 

A jerky but long shake of the head back and forth, and a gritting of the teeth, conveyed a decided “No.” 

Alana nodded back. She knew how to handle this sort of thing—though that made it no less alarming. “Can I touch you?” she asked. 

Another shaking nod, Yes. 

Alana put her hand on the small of Will’s back and pressed firmly but gently, taking a step forward. He moved with her, stiff and gasping. 

“We’re going to get out of here,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.” 

Will did not respond, but his head bobbed up to watch where they were walking. 

“That’s my car, right ahead,” Alana said. “I’m going to put you into the passenger seat, and take you home. Do you want to go home, Will?” 

He just kept walking slowly toward the car. She could see his face now. His mouth was twisted into a grimace of fear and pain, eyes glassy and panicked. 

Will was doing so well with what Alana knew he must be feeling, she realized, that he had obviously been through this before. 

She was going to end up in prison herself. She was going to murder Chilton. She was going to mount his head on a pike and give it to Will. 

They made it to the car. Alana turned the air conditioning up to its coldest setting. Will was sweating, beads forming and streaking down his temples. Alana kept one eye on Will as she pulled out from the tiny back parking lot of the facility and onto the road leading to the entrance and exit gates at the edge of the hospital grounds. She knew that panic attacks could last anywhere from five minutes to hours. As she drove she realized her own face was pulled into a semblance of the grimace on Will’s, and relaxed her facial muscles, hoping he hadn’t seen it. 

Beside her, Will raised a hand to cover his mouth tightly. 

“Are you feeling nauseous?” Alana asked. The guards waved her vehicle out the exit gate and she pulled onto a low-speed country road. 

Will nodded. The muscles in his jaw were jumping. 

Alana retrieved a plastic shopping bag from her backseat, a maneuver she half-feared would frighten Will but which he seemed to tolerate, and handed it to him. 

“You don’t have to worry about that part of it,” she said. “If you need to throw up, go right ahead. I understand. And if you want me to pull over, just tell me.” 

He clutched the bag, mouth still shut tight. His glasses had fallen down to the end of his nose. Alana pushed them back up. He was rocking back and forth, now, moving as little as possible in every other way, limbs like stone. 

She could feel in her very bones the grasping search for comfort that the rocking implied. 

“Now, we’re going to breath together, okay?” Alana asked. 

Will did not respond. 

“Hey, look at me.” 

With obvious effort, he turned and looked at her. 

“We’re going to breath together for a little while, and then we’re going to keep driving, and then we’re going to be at your home,” she said. “Okay?” 

Will nodded. 

As they traversed the grainy back roads that led to the highway—Baltimore State Hospital was secluded, for obvious reasons—Alana coached will through breathing exercises and forced him, though he resisted, to lift his arms above his head in rhythm again and again until his muscles were exhausted, taking deep breaths through the motions. Repetitive, tiring motions and deep breathing were, in Alana’s experience, some of the best ways to get a patient through a panic attack when in public, on the road or otherwise lacking access to real medical facilities. 

They took state roads for the first half hour of the journey, Alana talking the whole way—“We’re going to get you home,” she said again and again; “Breath, breath; I know it’s not okay now, but it will be okay.” 

It became apparent just as they were approaching the highway that Will’s breathing was fast, but within a normal range and unlabored. He was still lifting his arms, but stopped and put his hands in his lap. He was no longer trembling. His expression was blank again, not anguished. He looked haggard. 

After a moment, he leaned his head against the window and fixed his eyes on something Alana couldn’t see. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

Alana glanced at him. With an obvious effort, he turned his head to meet her glance. He didn’t look her in the eye, but he looked at her face. “For getting me, and for … all of that,” he said. He almost registered a sardonic smile. “Great way to start of my freedom, huh? And a great new first impression on you I surely made.” 

Alana smiled, more from relief than humor. “You don’t have to make a good impression on me,” she said. 

“That’s fortunate, all things considered,” Will replied. There was sadness in his eyes. It was the first emotion she had seen that wasn’t part of the panic attack since she’d retrieved him. It stopped Alana. Something about him was so still, his eyes so lightless. The delayed, hoped-for bliss of their reunion looked now to Alana like the dream of a child. Of course Will would not be doing well, after what he had been through. 

But no, she corrected herself after a moment. He was, clearly, much worse off than he should be. Perhaps Alana had hoped for him to be better off than she could reasonably have hoped for. But his obvious ill health and changed affect went too far in the other direction. 

“Are you okay, Will?” Alana blurted before she could corral her thoughts into a more eloquent formation. 

Will nodded. “I’m fine,” he said. It wasn’t convincing, but he told the lie with a straight face. “Dr. Chilton gave you my file?” 

Alana paused, baffled by the wall he’d put up. Will had never been one to speak freely about his feelings, but he had also never been a liar when it came to those feelings. He would hedge, avoid questions, answer in tangents. Sometimes, if he had work to do, he would say he was okay to keep working, to go on doing what he had to do. Maybe that’s all he meant now: He was fine to go forward. Wherever that was. Alana reserved judgment for the time being. 

“Yes,” she answered his question. “I haven’t read it yet. But he should have mentioned in person, when he was briefing me on your case, that you’ve begun having panic attacks.” 

Will shrugged, with no expression again. “I did a lot of things while I was in there,” he said. “I guess he didn’t see fit to write them all down.” 

“Panic attacks, Will? He didn’t see fit to write down that you are having panic attacks?” 

“I’m sure he put my anti-anxiety medications on there,” Will said. He glanced at her purse on the ground at Will’s feat. A hard copy of his file poked out in a manila folder. 

“Was he treating you, or just medicating you, for God’s sake?” 

Will shrugged again. “Can we get my meds filled before you take me home?” he asked. His face, somehow, seemed even more walled off than it had a moment ago. “I want to be sure I have them tonight.” 

“Sure, Will,” Alana answered. She paused, choosing her words more carefully this time. “Will, what do you want to do now? For the rest of the day, and the week? The rest will come later. But for the next few days. I know this is sudden, and I want to minimize the effect the shock of changing circumstances can have on a person who has been institutionalized.” Sometimes she hated the wall she put up between her and Will by acting so clinical. But it kept her safe, more or less. 

Will might have been considering, since he was silent and did not look at Alana. But she could not be sure because his expression was still. 

After a moment he spoke, and the words sounded awkward and hollow—like an elementary school actor reciting lines in a play he’d much rather not be in. She got the feeling he’d rehearsed this. 

“I’d like you to stay. For just a little while,” he said. He didn’t look at her. “I don’t know if I want to ...” he trailed off, eyes cloudy, but then finished: “Talk. But I want you around for a little while. However long you’ve got time for, I guess. Or not.” 

That, anyway, had to be a good sign. “Of course,” she said. She struggled to find the words to go on. It was her turn to be embarrassed. “I’ve taken off two weeks to stay with you, Will. We’ve got time.” She kept her eyes fixed on the road. 

Will looked struck. “Really?” he asked. 

Alana nodded, smiling. 

“Thank you,” Will said. He seemed to try to smile, but the expression was incomplete and flickering. 

“Do you want me to call anyone?” Alana asked after a moment. Jack? Beverly? Your father?” 

Will shook his head again. “No,” he said. “No, no, nope.” He swallowed. “Please.” He closed his eyes, and went still. 

When he didn’t move for a solid five minutes Alana decided to drop it. She also decided not to ask the next question she had planned to ask: Do you want to talk about Hannibal Lecter? 

Another day. 

Watching to make sure Will wasn’t watching, she tapped out a text message to Beverly letting her know that a hoped-for welcome-home dinner for Will that night would not be happening. 

“Aw, soon?” Beverly replied. 

“Some time,” Alana replied. “Maybe not soon.”


	3. Locked Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alana gets Will home, and assesses his condition.

They stopped at a pharmacy just inside of Wolf Trap, one of the few in the small town, pulling into a shady parking spot in the uncrowded lot. Alana absently pulled the file from her purse as she removed her seat belt, riffling through the pages for Will’s list of medications. 

Then she found it. 

She didn’t realize she was staring, mouth hanging open and disgust registered clearly on her brow, until Will’s voice pierced her thoughts. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. 

“There are … eleven medications here, Will. Eleven psychotropic medications.” 

Will didn’t respond immediately, so Alana looked up at him. He was staring down at his lap, perhaps thoughtful. He nodded slightly. 

“This is unsustainable,” she said. “It’s unhealthy. Lithium, klonopin, Elavil, Xanex, Trilafon, Haldol, Nembutol—Valium? There are antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, anti-psychotics, sleep aids.” She looked up at Will again, and realized that a smile was threatening to register on her face. She stopped it. “Chilton drugged you out of your mind,” she said. She finished the thought only in her head: That’s why you’re acting like a zombie. Chilton drugged you into a zombie. You’re probably still Will, under there. 

“I didn’t realize there were quite so many,” Will said after a moment. “I didn’t take them all at once. Different times of day for different pills.” He shrugged. Took his glasses off. Rubbed his eyes tiredly. 

“We’re going to get you off all these,” Alana said, reaching a hand out to rub his back and then retracting it, thinking better of it, before he stopped rubbing his eyes to see the motion. “Then I’ll reassess your condition, and see if you need any of them. But, I’m not going to quit you cold turkey. Do you want to go to a hospital for a detox?” 

Will’s upper lip jumped and his eyes narrowed for just a moment before he checked them back to stillness. “No,” he said. His voice was more forceful than it had been all day. He looked at her. “Are you going to make me?” 

Alana’s trained mind picked up on the words he chose there: Are you going to make me? Not, Please don’t make me. Not, I don’t want to. Not, You can’t make me. Those words were the choice of someone who felt defeated and powerless. Alana’s heart sunk a few inches lower in her chest. What happened to this man in Baltimore? 

“I have to look at your dosages and assess the situation more fully,” she replied quietly. “But if I think there’s a chance you’ll be safe staying home, you’ll stay home. If it’s possible to do it safely at home, I’ll do everything I can to make it happen.” She had the strange sensation that she was alone in the car. She cut the feeling off the moment she felt it. 

Will nodded, stiff. “Thank you,” he said, voice low again. 

Alana filled the prescription while Will waited in the car, then drove the two of them and Will’s big bag of pills—which he held in his lap—through the small town, through fields and hills, to Will’s little house. 

As she got out of the car and retrieved Will’s garbage bag of personal effects from the backseat, Will surreptitiously popped open one of the bottles without taking it from the bag, and flung a pill into his mouth. He didn’t move when Alana went still, watching the back of his head as his neck muscles jumped from swallowing. 

She let it go, for now, and got out of the car. Wll followed, cradling his bag of medications. He looked at the house, but did not step forward. 

“What’s wrong, Will?” Alana asked. 

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. But he didn’t move. 

“Are you sure?” Alana squinted at Will, looking for any sign of what was happening inside his head. There was none. 

After a moment, without looking at Alana, Will took out the pill bottle again, knocked two small pills into his mouth, and returned the bottle to the bag. 

“You ready?” Alana asked after a moment. 

Will took a breath. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s go.” 

Alana handed him the keys, Will unlocked his door, and they stepped inside. 

The lights were on, the air conditioning running, the air fresh with Lysol and sun dried linen. Alana knew this. She and Beverly had come to the house and prepared it for Will’s possible arrival the day before. The sheets were washed, the refrigerator and pantry stocked, the rooms aired out. They had even put fresh flowers in a vase on the coffee table.

And the dogs. The moment the door was opened, Will and Alana were surrounded by jumping, barking canines. They’d given them all baths and brushed the coats the day before. 

It paid off even better than Alana could have hoped, at this point. Will moved forward through the sea of fur, scratching heads, allowing himself to be licked, holding paws, nearly falling down from a tackle from Winston, and his face registered first gratitude and then, for a moment, happiness.

Will was smiling as he managed the pack of ecstatic canines. The smile touched his eyes. 

After a moment he looked up at Alana, almost embarrassed by his own expression it seemed. “Alana,” he said. There was warmth in his voice. “Thank you.” 

Alana set the garbage bag down on the carpet and closed the steps between her and Will. The dogs let her pass. She took the bag of drugs from him and set it on a counter. Then she hugged him. 

He breathed against her for a moment, unmoving, the dogs brushing against both their legs but no longer jumping at Will. Slowly, WIll raised his arms to embrace her, too, gingerly at first, and then more tightly. He still felt as if he were holding himself apart, in some way, but he was there. He did not pull away. 

Alana had no intention of breaking the hug, herself, she realized. She pulled him even closer. He did not protest. After a few heart beats, he put his head down on her shoulder and stood still like that. 

Minutes passed. It was Will who broke the embrace. 

“I mean it, Alana,” he said quietly. “Thank you. I mean, I assume it was you who did all this, and not elves that come in the night.” 

“Not elves this time,” she joked back, knowing the jokes were lame but not caring—if he was capable of levity of any kind, he was reachable (right?). “It was me.” 

Alana busied herself with putting away Will’s things from the hospital while Will set the psychotropic medications in a line on the countertop. A dog stood on each side of him, both their heads cocked as they watched him deal with the rattling little cylinders. 

As Alana put Will’s underwear into his washing machine, she thought about the situation. Her shock at his deterioration was waning now, and she could think about it with a clearer head. In terms of his physical health, he clearly needed a lot of help. And she still didn’t know everything that might be happening inside his head. He might be as broken as he seemed, he might not. He might be dead inside—there was nothing behind his eyes. He might just be bowled over by Lithium and Klonopin and Valium. Only time would tell, and over time, he would recover from whatever it was that was wrong. They would make sure of it. He was strong. If he’d been broken by Baltimore and the experiences that put him there, then he was reparable. He was made of good quality stuff, and good quality stuff could be repaired, sometimes better than new. He had never been stable, not even when he’d been well. She would make him stable. 

But God, would it be a long road. She could hardly stand to think about his eyes. 

They would make a plan. They would make a plan of action, and start on it as soon as possible. That’s what they needed to do. Now was not the time to over think. 

She came back into the kitchen to see Will sitting listlessly at the table, staring at nothing, body still. Winton’s head was resting on his lap, and Will’s fingers rested on the dog’s soft head, but they weren’t moving. Will’s eyes were even more flat now, the eyes of someone high. The same pill bottle from the car was on the kitchen table with him. 

Alana picked the bottle up and read the label. “Valium,” she said. Two milligram tablets. “This seems to be the one you liked.” 

Will gave a conciliatory look. “Valium they gave me in bottles,” he said. “To take as needed.” Alana had a flash of patients she had who had been in the “mental health care system” too long without tangible results. They, too, parroted the language of the psychiatrists they relied upon: “a better match with my neurochemistry,” “minimal appearance of side effects,” “take as needed.”

“How many would you say you take a day?” she asked, collecting herself. 

Will looked backward at Alana, thinking. “Eighteen?” he said. “Twenty?” 

Alana had to keep herself from staring again. Her stomach swooped, as if she’d been shot out onto a roller coaster without warning. That was a maximal dose, verging on dangerous. “That’s a lot, Will,” she said quietly. 

“It’s all I had,” he said defensively. “I mean that literally, most of the time. I had nothing else in that cell to look at, to … to think about. Nothing to do, nothing to … focus on.” 

“You didn’t get the books I was sending you?” 

Will looked up at Alana curiously. She noticed that one of his hands was shaking subtly. A side-effect of lithium, especially at heavier doses. “You sent me books?” There was a note of emotion in his voice. Hope, maybe. 

“Of course,” Alana said. “I told you I would. I sent books, an iPod with all your music, flowers on holidays. You didn’t get them?” 

Will shook his head. “No,” he said after a moment. “Nothing.” 

Between them passed the understanding that Chilton had denied Will these comforts. Will just looked down at his hands, his shoulders slumping. 

She would really, really kill Chilton. What had he done?

She’d never seen Will look so broken before. She remembered what she’d told him one morning not long before his arrest: “You’re not broken.” She was less sure now than she’d been then. 

“May I make a request?” she said. 

“Sure,” he replied.

“Can I stay the nights here?” she asked. “I mean I know I’ve lied a few times, said I live close enough that this is a stop on my home. But I was just trying to see you. I live in Baltimore.” 

Will’s eyes darted around, as if he were looking for her though she was right in front of him. Finally, his eyes settled on her collarbone andhe spoke, ignoring her caveats and addressing only the question. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. If that’s what you want.” 

Alana scrutinized him. “Do you want me to stay? Is that okay? I know you value your seclusion. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t live an hour out of Baltimore.” 

Will shrugged. He was pretty high, Alana realized. He didn’t feel a need to communicate with her. He was elsewhere. 

Alana was alarmed. With the drugs, the panic attacks, the nonresponsiveness, he really did seem—she could say this much to herself, in her own mind; you don’t have to be politically correct or clinically accurate in the recesses of your own mind—like a mentally ill person. 

She had hoped to ask to stay. And to be told emphatically “Yes.” And to sit on the porch with him at dusk, pour a whiskey for him, pop a beer open for her … Those dreams seemed silly now. He’d been released from Baltimore. But he didn’t seem anywhere near being over the experiences of the last year and a half. 

She sighed. “Okay,” she said. “I think you want me to stay. I’m settling for the fact that I want me to stay, for now.” 

Will did not respond. 

“Are you hungry?” Alana asked after a moment. 

Will shook his head. His pupils were larger than normal. 

“No, I bet you aren’t,” she said, trying to remain clinical. “With that many medications you’ve probably got no appetite at all anymore.” 

Will nodded. Alana had, again, the strange sensation of being alone. “I’m going to make us something to eat, and you’re going to eat it, regardless of whether you want it. How does that sound?” 

“Sure,” Will said. 

“What should I make?” 

“Whatever you have in the fridge.” 

Alana made cheese-filled pasta with a cream sauce and salad on the side, walnuts sprinkled on the salad and chicken laid over the pasta. She needed to get Will nutrients and calories. 

She cooked quickly and efficiently, being not so much a natural cook as a well-practiced one. As the pasta was boiling and she was leaning against the counter surveying the kitchen, she felt Will come up behind her. She turned to him. 

“How can I help?” he asked. 

Alana smiled. “I’ll show you how to make the sauce,” she said. 

Will was definitely high, but he had always been good with his hands. After Alana explained to him what he needed to do to put the sauce together (which required only low heat on the stove, or she would not have let him do it in that state) from the ingredients she laid on the counter, he caught on quickly and was busily whisking, chopping and measuring within moments. 

Something about Will’s face changed as he worked. He seemed less blank, less wall-like, and more genuinely relaxed. There were degrees of expressionlessness, Alana decided. She smiled at him as he worked, catching his eye, and he smiled back. It did not reach his eyes. But it was something. 

It wasn’t long before the two sat down to eat, salad and pasta in bowls on the table before them. Alana ate some pasta but more salad, being a woman in her mid-thirties who knew what she had to do to keep fitting into her painstakingly assembled closet. While she ate, she watched Will. 

He moved things around his plate. He took maybe three bites of pasta, two of salad, before Alana was done eating and pushed her plate away. 

“Remember how I said you were going to eat it anyway?” she asked. 

Will nodded. “I’m trying,” he said. 

“Why is it hard?” 

“Food just ”—he shook his head. “It’s like if you’ve got a stomach virus, that sick feeling when you swallow.” 

“How long have you felt that way?” Alana asked. 

“Months,” Will said, shrugging. “I guess months. There wasn’t much of a sense of time in there.” 

“It’s probably the drugs,” Alana said. “They’re affecting your system. I couldn’t say which ones, exactly, or if it’s a combination of two or more. But we’ll get you off them soon.” 

Will pushed a piece of pasta to the side of his plate. “All of them?” he asked. His voice lilted with attempted casualness. At least he was still a bad liar. 

“Yes, all of them,” Alana said. “We’ll take you off all of them, to establish a new baseline and determine what you may really need, if anything. I am your doctor now, and I don’t trust your previous doctor to care for a plant, let alone a human being who needs help.” 

“I need help?” 

Alana raised her eyebrows. “Do you think you need help?” 

“Such a therapist all the time, turning my questions back on me,” Will said. He gave a sarcastic smile. 

She heard the rest of what he meant to say: And I’d rather you were my friend. She had wanted to be. But he needed a care taker right now, a medical professional. Not a friend. “Everything I say or do has just one goal,” she said. “To make you healthy.” 

“Then you’ve already decided I’m not healthy,” Will said. “Why do you ask me if you’ve already made up your mind?” 

Winston sat down beside Will, perhaps summoned by Will’s vaguely challenging tone, and fixed a questioning look on Alana. 

“Because I’m open to being corrected,” Alana said. It was about time they had a conversation about this. She needed to know what was wrong with him; what Chilton had done to him. “Do you think you’re okay? Do you not need my help?” 

Will’s head began to swing back and forth as if he were shaking his head, but unconsciously; it was a tic. One shaking hand went out to sit on Winston’s head, and the nodding slowed a bit. “I can’t,” he choked out. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?” 

Just more shaking of the head. 

Alana sat silently for a moment, considering a new approach. Finally, she looked up. “Will, can you tell me what happened to you while you were at Baltimore?” 

Will shook his head. 

“Anything? One incident?” 

“You visited me,” he answered. “Not long after I got there. It was … it was not a bad thing.” 

“That’s true, I did visit you. Anything else?” 

He shook his head again. 

“Maybe something that happened with another patient?” 

“I didn’t see other patients, really,” Will said. “At meals. That was about all. And not when I was in …” He seemed to hit a wall. “Not all the time.” 

Alana nodded. “So you were often alone,” she said. 

Will shrugged. A classic defense when a psychiatrist took implication from a patient’s words correctly. 

“Did it bother you, to be alone so much?” 

Will shook his head again, broadly, as if he was trying to shake the conversation off. “Please,” he said. He was clutching the hair of Winston’s head, and the dog was taking it without complaint. “Don’t make me. Don’t make me … sit here and ignore you.” 

“What do you mean don’t make you ignore me?” 

“I mean …” Will’s eyes shut. “I mean that. Please.” 

He was beginning to tremble again, and after this morning Alana did not want to push him. “Okay,” she said. “Breath, okay?” Then she got an idea. “Look, Will. You don’t want to ignore my questions. But you can ask questions, right? I promise not to turn them back on you, or ask my own follow-up questions. Ask me whatever you need to ask me, to feel better.” 

Will’s head stopped. He considered. “Are you still willing to stay with me, even if I don’t give you answers or even tell you I need help?”

“Yes,” Alana said simply. 

Will nodded. “What do you think is wrong with me?” 

There was no expression on his face, but Alana could somehow feel desperation in the room. It was, compared to the sense of being alone, comforting. She felt that he wanted her to know what was wrong with him, without having to tell her. She decided to answer professionally. “I think you’ve been through a traumatic experience, and you’re probably suffering some post traumatic stress. I also think your body has not been well taken care of while you were in Baltimore, and that the ill health of your body may be affecting your mind. I think you’re taking eleven medications, some of them conflicting, and they’re making you fuzzy and making it hard for me or you to know if something is really wrong inside. That’s what I think.” 

Will nodded, but did not protest. He seemed to accept the assessment. The desperation was still there, but there didn’t seem to be anything left to say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, comments, kudos, criticism, all welcome :) It's not betad; I'm still new to posting fan fiction. Be kind, and read on!


End file.
